


Under the Sea

by Meltha



Category: Little Mermaid - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 01:12:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/pseuds/Meltha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mysteries beneath the sea, mysteries in his own home, Eric knows he will never learn all their facets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [genarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/gifts).



> Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is made from this work of fanfiction.

Eric was born near the ocean, and the sound of the waves is like a second heartbeat to him. The first time he was away from home, deep into the countryside where the sea’s voice disappeared, he was only nine years old. The silence had unnerved him, and he couldn’t explain at first what was missing. The soft susurrations of water crashing on sand were part of him, and until he was near it again, the world seemed unreal.

He looks at Ariel sometimes, the way she gazes out at the sea from the balcony of their room, and he wonders if she feels that way all the time. To grow up, to live sixteen years beneath the water, and then suddenly to see it from the right side (or was his side the wrong one?) had to play games with her view of things.

While he had always loved the sea, it had been a vast, moving setting filled with whitecaps and endless motion, but always and forever against the backdrop of the sky, surrounded by the wind and the salt spray. But beneath those waves, the motion of the water was endless, currents instead of wind, and the light was forever filtered in blue. At least, that’s what he imagined it would be like, but he wasn’t sure. Even with her descriptions of Triton’s palace and the grottos and reefs, he couldn’t quite picture it, and those were paths he would never tread.

And she… the paths she treads must feel so constrained sometimes. The ocean is much vaster than the earth, after all, and there she needn’t have remained only on the ocean floor but could practically fly, shooting with strength and freedom in all directions, making gravity a paltry thing. Here, she dances, and so gracefully that it tears at his heart, but she seems always to be yearning to slip from the bonds that hold her in place on the earth, to fly like an angel since that was her birthright, after all.

She has never said she’s unhappy. Her father and sisters visit her, and she chatters merrily enough with them, with him, with her friends the fish and the bird and the crab (he has had to change his diet to avoid unfortunate accidents, and he feels pangs of guilt sometimes for past entrees). But he wonders, looking at her, if she ever regrets the impulsive decision she made not merely to leave her father’s house but to abandon the most basic rules that governed her world. He has woken some nights to see that she is stretching her arms up and away in sleep, as though they are still billowed on unseen currents, a sight so unnatural it makes the hairs on his neck prickle, but then her hands fall, gracefully, slowly, back to her chest. They have remembered their place now.

She’s looking at the ocean once more tonight, the call of the waves more prominent not through volume but through the attention they both give it. The moon is full overhead, and its silver disc reflects on the surface of the water along with countless stars, like an enormous string of pearls that has snapped, each rolling chaotically free. He goes to her, slips his arms around her, and inhales the soft fragrance of the ocean in the red waves of her hair.

“What do you see?” he asks softly, his voice blending with the rise and fall of the waves.

She says nothing for a moment, her lips pursed as she tries to find the right words.

“Everything,” she finally whispers.


End file.
